Abstract

Why did the healthcare reform plan, the central issue of President Obama’s first four years – become so unpopular among members of the mass public in the U.S.? The answer may lie in the way the issue was framed by leaders of the parties in their communications with the public. Frames have been shown to significantly affect the opinions of subjects in the experimental lab (i.e. Chong and Druckman 2007a, b; Druckman 2010, 2011). However, fewer studies have attempted to document and test the causes behind these frame opinion changes. My dissertation focuses on answering how political policy issues can evolve from popular mandates to political time bombs when they are framed using values that are less convincing to the public. I show that frame strategy mistakes not only affect short-term evaluations of policies, but also the kind of news that one selects about that issue. This creates a feedback loop, in which strong frames create stronger connections to news that emphasizes the same message, and eventually may change the nature of an entire policy debate. In the case of policies like healthcare that involve social spending programs, I show that Democrats fail to frame successfully when they emphasize humanitarian values (defined as needs-based care for others). Using MTurk experiments with over 1900 subjects, I show that these humanitarian appeals are significantly less motivating to individuals – even those who rate high on humanitarian values – than appeals emphasizing egalitarianism or individualism. These differences are even more pronounced among those who are not strong partisans, and can result in significant changes in both policy attitudes and news choices. I conclude that Democrats would have garnered far more support had they used rhetoric emphasizing egalitarian, or equality-inducing themes, in selling healthcare reform to the American public.